The present invention is directed to a machine for inserting materials into envelopes, and more particularly to a semi-automatic machine for assisting an operator in placing materials into envelopes.
There are many commercial environments where thousands of mail pieces must be processed each day. For example, banks, utility companies and the like must prepare extremely large numbers of mail pieces to be sent out to their customers on a daily basis. The preparation of the mailing pieces usually includes the placing of materials in the form of, for example, cancelled checks or bills for customers into envelopes. While it may appear that the opening of an envelope and the placing of materials therein is a simple matter, this procedure is in actuality laborious and time-consuming, costing such businesses thousands of dollars each year.
To reduce the cost of preparing such mailings, various forms of fully automatic "envelope stuffing" machines have been developed. These machines are very complicated and expensive, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars and, as has been found in practice, can only be economically employed for very large mail-processing workloads. Hence, such machines are suitable only for very large banks, utility companies, or the like.
There are many businesses, on the other hand, which must prepare mailings which are too small in number to substantiate, economically, the utilization of a fully automatic machine, but which are too large in number to economically employ the required personnel for manual mail preparation. Such may be the case in small banks or rural utility companies for example. Hence, there is a need in the art for a machine which is inexpensive in comparison to the cost of fully automatic envelope stuffing machines, but which will enable mail preparation by relatively few operators at a rate which satisfies mail preparation workloads that are too small to justify a fully automatic machine and too large to justify the employ of manual personnel.
It is therefore a general object of the present invention to provide an improved semi-automatic mail inserting machine for assisting an operator in placing materials to be mailed into envelopes.
It is a more particular object of the present invention to provide such a machine which automatically unfolds the prefolded unsealed flaps of the envelopes and presents the envelopes to an operator in an opened condition in a manner which facilitates ready placement of materials into the envelopes.
It is still a more particular object of the present invention to provide such a machine which presents the opened envelopes to the operator in rapid succession and under operator control.